What is Episode III about?

I went to see Episode III tonight in Tampa on a business trip. It was satisfying in completing and tying up many plot elements and details of the previous movies. Fortunately, JarJar didn’t have any speaking lines. The movie showed, above all else, the fall and spiritual tragedy of Anakin Skywalker (nee Darth Vader). Anakin’s fall is germaine to the discussion on this site (www.frneo.blogspot.com) of Status Anxiety, I believe.

The main struggle of all our lives seems to be to die to self. But it can't be done in the abstract; it is done by surrendering self to God. Anakin couldn’t manage it. When given the opportunity to say the Jedi's equivalent to “Thy will be done”, he demurred. He wanted Anakin's will to be done, instead. So, he turned to the dark side of The Force. And, in doing so, Anakin yielded to and then became evil. In fact, his surrender to evil was prompted through the tempting of the Sith Lord. But, he had to cooperate and surrender to it. His ego and pride and arrogance and blindness to anything that would not allow him to have his way were thus unchecked, and surged into full bloom. The transition complete, Anakin was reborn. He became Darth Vader, with scary black suit and mask to boot.

Now, what does this have to do with Gall and the book he wants everyone to read (see Fr. Neo's blog for this conversation, please)? The angst that Gall expressed there about his struggles to correctly think and be are about the alternatives open to someone who is not open to surrender. It is called "posing", by some. Posing is trying to be someone, anyone, rather than becoming what God created you to be. God’s way, and the way of the "Good" side of The Force, is the way of surrender to a will not your own. The self is not suppressed in this process; it is transcended. Paul’s way of expressing this is “It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me”. Wasn’t this Anakin’s struggle?

Yoda had noticed in Anakin as a "youngling" the anger associated with his mother’s death. Anger is about suppressed or subverted power. Anakin was angry because his mother had been taken from him. His powerlessness as a child about this issue was his weakness. He even knew he was conflicted and told Naboo about it. He also defended the Jedi to the Chancellor by saying that the Jedi were selfless, they were about serving others. When the Chancellor tempted him, this drew out his anger and his pride. Now, instead of a struggle with the dark feelings of anger and resentment about his mother, he was able to “express” his anger. This gave him strength and power, claimed the Chancellor. This would make him more powerful than any Jedi, which was a lie. Anakin's struggle had been to keep it in. Anger and resentment needed to be transcended, but not by fighting against it, but by surrendering it to...well, the correct answer is Christ. I don’t know how the Jedi did this without a personal God who offered to take their sin from them and relieve their burdens. But, the reason for surrender is that surrender is self-abnegation. Our will is what keeps us from the fullness of life in Christ. Christ, like the Force, is actually that which created, maintains and sustains us all.

Gall, on Fr. Neo's site, doesn’t want us to get wrapped up in terms and make our conversations about our facility with the terms. But this is about something real, not just specialized words to show facility with. It may seem abstract, but it is not complex. Surrender to Christ (God) is a posture of submission, immediately felt. Symbolically it is kneeling before His altar. But in the self, it is experienced as dropping the struggle of “trying” to be anything, yielding our self to Him and asking him to help us do His will. Like the Jedi, with practice, we can then become selfless, working and living for the benefit of others, because that is His will for us. He created us to do good works. The specifics of how we do that are peculiar to who each of us were made to be, but that is how we get off the struggle merry-go-round. We acknowledge Him and then surrender to His will. Real surrender must be a way of being, not a way of acting. Those who through God’s grace "be" His will have enormous charisma and humility. Most people believe that charisma is about self esteem and self strength and humility is a form of timidity. They seem to be polar opposite characteristics. But people who have both humility and charisma from spiritual maturity look a lot like Jedi: peaceful and alert, ready to serve with courage and full commitment; able to give their lives. To these blessed ones death is not to be feared. If it is God’s will for them, then so be it.

So, anyway, that’s the way it looks from Tampa tonight.